Post navigation

Things You Need to Be a Publisher

If you’re reading this, the answer is pretty simple. At the most basic, nothing you don’t already have—if you have content.

According to Bowker, the company that will be happy to sell you some ISBNs, nearly a quarter of a million books were published—self-published—last year. So you don’t need anything more than all those other publishers do. A computer, sufficient software to create the book block (all your content) and your cover, and an Internet connection. That’s it.

As I said in an earlier post, the barrier to entry is pretty darned low—so low that last, dying ant in my kitchen could drag a dog over it.

The one thing you won’t have that a “real” publisher will have is a sales force. Yes, Amazon or whoever else will “stock” (virtually) your book, but it is highly unlikely that it will get into brick and mortar bookstores because you will have no leverage to make that happen.

So why would I want to do this? Good question. I’ll see if I can answer it one way or another. Stay tuned.

About Steve, i.e., him

Stephen Stark is an award-winning novelist and bestselling ghostwriter. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, Poets & Writers and in many other journals. He has been a fellow and taught at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and won an NEA Literature Fellowship in fiction. His novel, Second Son, was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 1992, and a New and Noteworthy Paperback of 1994.

2 thoughts on “Things You Need to Be a Publisher”

Go on tour, do lots of readings with local writers that can draw a crowd at mom-and-pop bookstores (there are some left!), get the small bookstores to stock your book. Have a penny jar out for donations for gas money. Couchsurf. Sounds liberating. (Can you tell I have four kids and a full time job?)